LOS ANGELES — Train delays have become so frequent on the Riverside Metrolink line that commuter rail officials have taken to writing letters on behalf of riders to excuse a tardy arrival to a boss or day-care provider, the Los Angeles Times reports.
There are times when the trains are two hours late, held up because the rails are being used by Union Pacific Railroad freight trains.
“There are times while on the train when it would stop and a freight train would go by in front of us,” said Jack Zita, a software engineer from Diamond Bar. “Can you believe that? How can this freight be of higher priority than people getting to work?” Al Harris, a manager at Bank of America in Los Angeles, said there are hourly workers at the bank who ride the line whose jobs are jeopardized by being late to work, he said.
“The delays are very frustrating, and we don’t know until we are standing on the platform,” said Harris who catches the train in Industry, seven minutes from his home in Phillips Ranch. “It can be three out of five days one week.” The delays started soon after the commuter rail line opened the Riverside route in 1993, Metrolink spokeswoman Sharon Gavin said. Five trains run the weekday route west from downtown Riverside to Union Station in Los Angeles for the morning commute. Six trains return in the afternoon. About 2,300 people ride the route daily, Gavin said.
The tracks belong to Union Pacific, and Metrolink paid $71 million as part of an agreement that paid for track work and to guarantee that commuter trains have the priority during rush hour.
But trains are routinely delayed, Gavin said. It means commuters pay stiff p
enalties to day-care centers when they pick up children late in the evening. They are left explaining to employers why they are 30 minutes late.
“That is unacceptable to us. It is certainly unacceptable to our customers,” Gavin said.
Metrolink CEO David Solow has written a stern letter to Union Pacific detailing numerous delays, accusing the company’s train dispatchers of violating an agreement between the two entities and demanding that Union Pacific meet its obligations to Metrolink.
“UP, however, demonstrates too frequently its inability or unwillingness to do so,” Solow wrote. “Neither our passengers, nor [Metrolink] can permit the situation to continue.”
Solow has given Union Pacific 30 days before Metrolink will take the delays to arbitration.
Union Pacific officials acknowledge that company dispatchers in San Bernardino and Omaha have been sending freight trains ahead of commuter trains when they shouldn’t.
The company has already begun to make sure that dispatchers in both centers know of Metrolink’s rush hour priority, said Mike Furtney, Union Pacific’s spokesman in California.
The delays have become an embarrassment to Metrolink, which sold February monthly passes at a 25% discount because of delays in January.
“This issue is not a trains-being-on-time issue, it is a commuting issue,” Zita said. “You start losing these people. They will start crowding the freeways and that defeats the purpose.”
Metrolink’s Riverside line runs through Ontario and Pomona before heading into the south San Gabriel Valley. While other Metrolink train lines are within five minutes of schedule 98% of the time, the Riverside line’s on-time performance is 86%.
In May, Riverside riders will have another option, when Metrolink opens trains to Los Angeles via Fullerton. That ride is now a two-part ride with a change in Fullerton but 98% of those trains run on time, Gavin said. The new route won’t help riders such as Harris and Zita, who pick up the Riverside line midway.